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January 2008, Issue #20

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In this issue:

Lawyer Marketing Online With Audio and Video

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Lawyer marketing online can be a complex process. I know from personal experience and spending over $100,000 on websites in my 13 years with online marketing. The more you understand about what works and does not work to get you new clients online the better. We don’t want you taken to the cleaners by the well meaning but sometimes ignorant vendors or worse still the deliberately misleading types that are also all too common in attorney marketing. If you learn nothing else than a website is not Internet marketing then you have learned a lot. What most vendors sell you is a website because that is what most people think is Internet marketing. A coach who knows lawyer marketing online in your corner will save you thousands to tens of thousands in vendor fees and easily earn you tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands in revenues.

Lawyer marketing online includes keywords research, navigation/marketing funnel, on page SEO, link strategy, web copywriter, designer and techies. Today I am going to at least introduce the topic of audio and video in lawyer marketing online. Let’s get going with audio first. Why would you want audio on your site? Let me list the ways:

1. First and foremost with lawyer marketing online it lets your visitor hear you and know you at a deeper level than just what copy with a picture on a site can convey. Audio impacts the visitor at a whole new and a much deeper level. Also let’s dwell on the “heard you” part since hearing involves more of the brain it embeds your message deeper into the mind of your prospect with more chance of retention than any copywriting on the page could do alone. Audio makes you more memorable. That is a good thing in attorney marketing.

2. Some visitors prefer to listen to audio over reading. After all a computer screen can be a tough read and who has time to read everything on a website anyway. Additionally, you can even set your audio to turn on automatically when a visitor hits the page which can be a big plus in lawyer marketing online. Do remember some visitors don’t read all the copy but only scan the headlines and bold copy. If the audio is running while they scan so much the better. Some will multitask on something else while they listen to your audio but at least they are listening when they probably would not have been reading.

3. By doing an audio you are delivering a consistent message to your visitor that enables you to know what they have heard before they have contacted you. A key success ingredient in lawyer marketing online.

4. Successful businesses have personalities and this is true with attorney marketing. Using audio brings that personality forward in ways the written word cannot. Competition is fierce and will get even more competitive moving forward. You will be differentiating yourself from other attorneys by having audio on your site. Since being someone’s attorney is very personal it is important that they hear you personally so they have a more personal sense of who you are.

5. As you get deeper into lawyer marketing online you will probably be doing social media sites and many of those enable you to post audio to the site. A nice advantage in that arena. More on this topic in future newsletters.

6. You will have the ability to place audio on podcasting sites as well. More on this topic in future newsletters since this can be an important component of attorney marketing.
   Let’s move on to video in lawyer marketing online by saying everything you just read above multiplied exponentially applies to video online. If you want some examples of great, awful and folksy online video by attorneys go here:

http://www.torys.com/VideoCenter/Pages/default.aspx 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9dMjPgj5QA 

http://www.personalinjuryfyi.com/video.html 

http://www.mrdui.com/virtualtournew_part1.html 

If you want to really get into it then go to YouTube.com and search under any practice area you desire and see what you see. My hat is off to even the bad ones as they are using video early and they will learn. One of my goals is to keep you from learning from the school of hard knocks in attorney marketing. The quick and dirty here is the web is going video. You and I need to have video on our websites. End of story. You may not want to skip using audio in some ways and put the emphasis now on going to video.

Why do I say that lawyer marketing online requires video? Where is the evidence? Well, if you want the bottom line it is in research completed by the well respected Pew Foundation titled “Online Video”. This study found, among other things, that “57% of Internet users have watched videos online, and most of them share what they find with others”. I do and I am 60 years old. Interestingly the study also found that viewers younger than 29 preferred amateur videos although overall 60% of the viewers preferred professionally produced videos. If you want a copy of the Pew report with all the details go here:

http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Online_Video_2007.pdf 

There will be an expectation soon on the part of your website visitors to see a video when they come to your site. If you don’t have a video they will wonder why you don’t have a video. Today people would wonder why you don’t have a website. In the not too distant past they wondered why you did not have an email address. This is what is coming. Video in lawyer marketing online is an imperative. Besides that, video is probably one of the most effective methods for getting your visitor’s attention, keeping that attention and converting them to a paying client. It is not the whole story but it is a major part of the conversion puzzle and will only become more so in the future. You want to be at the front of this change online.

This newsletter only scratches the surface on lawyer marketing online with audio and video. Last November I received an email from Mike Jackman. I had never heard of him but he had an “online video business card” in the email. I clicked on the link to the video and watched the video that caused me to call him and thus resulted in his mention here in the newsletter. This is just one creative use of video that worked for him and it can work for you. You might enjoy seeing what I saw when I clicked on that email “online video business card” here:

http://www.gotomyvideo.com/VBC/VBC-MikeJackman.html 

Well, enough for this time out. More food for thought I am sure. I am committed to you being all you can be in lawyer marketing online. 

Comments, ideas, questions or topics you would like to see addressed in future newsletters? I would love to hear from you. Just reply to this newsletter and tell me what you think.

Henry Harlow
Founder, www.Law-Firm-Marketing-Coach.com

PS: Get your #1 attorney marketing problem solved today. Spend complimentary quality time with me on the telephone. Details online at:

www.Law-Firm-Marketing-Coach.com/contact.html.